


just a matter of grace

by easystreets



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Cuddling & Snuggling, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sick Character, Sick Frank Iero
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:27:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28623282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easystreets/pseuds/easystreets
Summary: Frank spends most of junior year sick. Ray visits. Gerard does, even though he's fucking terrified of needles, and his mom comes before and after work. It's a little bit weird he hasn't seen Mikey until today.
Relationships: Frank Iero/Mikey Way
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29





	just a matter of grace

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! TW for sick characters and hospitals.

He spends most of his junior year sick.

Gerard comes, not as much as he’d like to see him, but a lot. He brings art supplies and murky containers of India ink and takes up so much space in the hospital room, with his stories about how the girls at art school dress and more importantly, the music they listen to, that Frank nearly forgets how shitty he feels until it’s time for a nebulizer treatment or the nurse kicks Gerard out, paintings still wet under his arms as he leaves, sincerely promising to draw the nurse next time he’s there, his voice and the squeak of his wet shoes echoing down the empty hallways.

Ray visits too, most days after school. He refuses to bring Frank cigarettes, which is lame as fuck, but smokes are, as the doctors and the fifty billion med students who practice identifying the signs of an advanced asthmatic on him say, “not conducive to his recovery.” He settles for bumming them off the janitor or the guy who works Sundays in the gift shop instead. Ray talks about school and shows Frank the latest issue of Kerrang or an especially cool riff he wrote in Spanish class and always gives him hugs when he goes, not as ostentatious or out of place in a hospital as Gerard, but calm, a gentle presence, like he’s curly-haired Jesus or something, holding the door open for orderlies and other visitors, most of them worried parents instead of stoned teenagers. Frank wonders if Gerard would draw that for him.

Other than that, nobody comes. Okay, his parents do, and a few of his aunts drop off stuffed animals and a copy of Little Women so he can apparently relate to the part where Beth drops dead after being sickly her whole life. It’s boring. Frank just wants to get better and go to shows and be shoved in lockers again. It’s like living in a fucking bubble; doing the same things over and over until he almost wishes his lungs would just crap out once and for all.

He gets dressed every day, mostly out of principle but also because it’s weird to wear a hospital gown-- the thing is basically a dress, and if he were normal height his ass would totally be on display-- and is pulling on a pair of worn-out jeans when someone knocks at the door.

“If you vant my blood, you’re gonna have to give me a minute to put my pants on,” Frank says, in his best vampire voice. It’s probably Diane, the coolest nurse ever, who has a bat tattoo on her forearm and a silver nose ring she flips around whenever her supervisor comes by. Frank can’t decide if he wants to fuck Diane or be her, and he’s daydreaming about that when the door creaks open. 

“Frank?” It’s Mikey Way. Frank’s stomach jumps, because he totally wasn’t expecting company-- it’s Tuesday fucking morning and his room is a mess: there’s magazines stacked in piles and his guitar case smack in the middle of his bed, and oh God, he’s turning into his Mom. He blinks, turns and waits for Mikey to come in.

“Hi,” Mikey says. “I just thought I’d… visit?” He’s taller than before, with his hands awkward at his sides, contorting as he cracks his knuckles. He’s still handsome as shit to Frank. Fuck, he thinks.

“Hi,” Frank says, and realizes he’s not wearing a shirt. Oh well, Mikey can enjoy the pale, scarred view. “Wanna get a drink?”

* * *

Mikey doesn’t talk on the whole elevator ride down. Frank presses the buttons and shifts back and forth on the balls of his feet. The shirt Frank threw on haphazardly has a big fucking picture of Carrie at the prom on it, drenched in pig blood, but Mikey doesn’t say anything, just stares at the dirty mirrored walls of the elevator.

“So,” Frank says, once they have their coffees. He made Mikey pay-- being sick and pitiful has its perks-- but he did carry the tray of drinks to a table in the hospital cafeteria like the fucking gentleman his mom raised him to be, so they’re totally even. Only, they’re not, because Frank is the slightest bit pissed that Mikey just no-showed for seven fucking months. “How’s things in the real world?”

“Um,” Mikey says. He hasn’t touched his drink, this weirdly sweet blended thing. Frank’s had it before, when he first came in, and he wonders if it would be weird to take a sip. Probably, he thinks, they haven’t seen each other in basically a year; but Frank chugs half of it back anyways. “Okay. I guess. Do you-- do you know when you’re getting out?”

“Nah,” Frank says. “Probably by summer. I should be back for senior year but…” he trails off, shrugging,  _ doctors, you know how they can be _ . “Whatever. Next summer’s gonna be the best fucking summer of our lives.” Our lives. Fuck, he missed Mikey, the silent way he nods in agreement and gets Frank so much, in his own quiet way. He’s totally the best partner ever; if Frank’s Kirk, Mikey’s Spock. 

“Do you know if your weird coffee drink has lecithin in it?” Frank asks, because he's so going to be paying for the handful of sips he took later.

“Only you know what the fuck lecithin is,” Mikey says, and they laugh and it’s just like fucking old times. 

“I-- I’m sorry,” Mikey finally says, glancing around like he’s worried someone’s listening in or something. As part of living in a hospital, Frank has absconded pretty much all privacy. “I should have visited. I mean, I was going to. But then I was worried I would make things weird, you know.”

“You didn’t make things weird, Mikey,” Frank says, even though he totally did and it fucking sucked not seeing him for basically ever. 

“Good,” Mikey stretches his giant spider hands across the table. There’s writing on his wrist BIOLOGY QUIZ MONDAY!!! “I brought you a present. It’s from when I went to visit Gee a couple weekends ago. He-- I wasn’t sure what you’re into now. But. Um,” he stalls, and awkward Mikey is back again. Like they’re strangers or something. “I thought you might like it.”

It’s wrapped in newspaper, the comics section and Frank rips it open before Mikey’s hands are even halfway off it. Fuck, he thinks. Goddamn does he love a good present. 

“Thank you,” Frank says. It’s the new Smashing Pumpkins CD, fucking Adore, with the coolest cover he’s ever seen. It’s awesome. He is totally, 100% into it. “I mean it. You didn’t have to--”

“It’s okay.” Mikey says. He clambers from his seat across, so that he’s smashed in right next to Frank. It’s like how they used to ride the bus together, smashed in like fucking sardines in the middlest row, sharing earbuds and headbanging the entire way home. Only now Mikey is way fucking taller than Frank, and there’s no good bruises on Frank, the type you get from shows, only the familiar scars, the grey-cuttlefish tone his skin’s taken on. “I missed you,” Mikey says, pushing his shoulder close to Frank, and this is the Mikey he missed, this is his Mikey. 

Suddenly he’s exhausted. It’s like coming home or something, only he’s in a hospital cafeteria and instead of listening to his new CD, he’s listening to Mikey’s deep breaths, in-out, in-out. It’s also the most he’s done in weeks, besides boring strolls through the hospital or the occasional walk outside where he greedily inhales all the visitor’s cigarette smoke and stares out at the grey world that used to be all his.

“Frankie,” Mikey’s saying. Frankie. Everyone calls him that, but Mikey says it differently, somehow. “Are you okay, asshole? You almost fell asleep.”

“Yeah,” Frank says. His chest is getting that tight feeling, the painful precursor to an asthma attack. He should probably go back to his room and tell Mikey to leave so he can have it in private and not scare Mikey off. “Um-- shit.” 

“What’s wrong?” 

“Can you go up to my room-- there’s this weird inhaler looking thing on the tray by the bed, just grab it quick otherwise--” fuck, he really needs to remember to bring his inhaler with him, “nurse’s gonna be on my back again.” He stares up at Frank with big dark worried eyes, but he nods and goes.

“Jesus, Frankie.” Mikey says, out of breath, less than a minute later. “This it?”

Frank takes a bunch of obnoxiously loud breaths, shallow and desperate at first, and then slower and more even. He doesn’t look up at Mikey. He’s definitely never coming back to visit now. God. Frank feels like such a fucking freak right now, with his face grey and his cheeks splotched with red, hands shaky and eyes watering just a little. 

“Thanks,” he mumbles, all sheepish now. “I should-- I should probably get some rest.”

“Yeah,” Mikey agrees. He grabs Frank’s arm to steady him as he stands up, and it’s warm and he’s so tired now, so fucking beat from doing absolutely nothing, that he leans on Mikey’s shoulder the whole way up. He holds the CD tight in his clammy hands as they stumble into the elevator and then shuffle under the bright lights off the hallway.

“Look,” Frank says, once he’s awkwardly settled into bed, pushing all of his stuff aside. “I understand if you don’t wanna come back, so don’t feel like shit about it? Nobody likes hospitals, and uh, it was pretty shitty of me to forget my inhaler and have you think I was gonna like, kick the bucket in the cafeteria.”

“I missed you,” Mikey says. “I fucked up by not visiting but I missed you and um, I want to-- is it fine if I stay?”

Frank isn’t expecting that, so he kind of just sits and stares out the blank windows into nothing for a moment. “You want to stay?” He coughs a little, makes sure his inhaler is in reach. “I’ll probably just be sleeping or doing homework or something. Fucking exciting shit.”

“I missed you,” Mikey repeats. “And I haven’t listened to it yet.”

Listened to what, Frank’s foggy brain thinks. Oh. The CD. He hands it to Mikey, in all it’s plastic-sealed glory, and he pops it into the player with his quick little Mikey hands, and then with one quick and insanely athletic move, he’s on the other side of Frank’s bed, his collection of earmarked magazines and guitar tabs crashing onto the floor. He holds Frank’s hand and says nothing and they’re at the greatest show of their lives.

_ And I could bring you into the light,  _ the first track says, and fuck that belongs on a mixtape, that belongs to them.  _ And I could take you home into the night. _

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you! If you enjoyed it or have anything to say, please leave a comment! This was my first MCR fic, so I'm kinda scared.
> 
> Edit 01/30/21: Thank you so very much for the lovely comments. I was so apprehensive to write bandfic, but everyone here made me feel so welcome! And thank you to the two people who subscribed to my Ao3! (I didn't know you could do that? I love you?) You all have beautiful souls, I think <3


End file.
